There are few things in this world as good as potatoes and vegetables covered in cheesy breadcrumbs. It’s a popular side dish that you’ve seen many variations of. I really enjoyed 4-36: Golden Potato Medley and the plating that Simply Delicious shows below looks so much better than how my dish came out. I go more for utility than aesthetics when I’m cooking, but it’s also true that you eat with your eyes before your stomach. 👀
This dish is the perfect side dish, but it is hearty enough to be eaten as an entree. It doesn’t look like much, but is perfect with hot sauce.
Making this dish required a lot of peeling and chopping, but it was otherwise easy to prepare.
Check out all of these fresh ingredients. This is going to be good.
First I chopped the carrots and then I peeled and sliced the potatoes. My wrist hurt a little bit after that. I put all of these into boiling water and let them cook for about 12 minutes, until the potato and carrot became tender.
I forgot to take a photo of the veggies in the saucepan, but this is what they looked like in the strainer when they were all done.
While the potatoes were boiling, I diced the onion, red peppers, and green peppers. This was the hard part, it only gets easier from here.
I omitted showing the diced onion earlier because it looks much better in the pan, sautéeing in butter.
Wow! The onions look better after a few minutes. Now it’s time to make the sauce. The recipe advises to add flour to create a roux.
This photo shows the next step in making the sauce. I mixed the milk, sour cream, and cheddar cheese into the onion mixture.
Now it’s time to start layering the ingredients for the casserole. I put the carrots and potatoes in the bottom of a half hotel pan.
Next, I added a layer of green and red peppers, followed by a layer of celery.
Finally, I added the cheese mixture and then sprinkled some panko bread crumbs on top. I used up all my cheese in the earlier step, so I omitted the additional shredded cheese on top. This did not affect the end result at all. It was still delicious.
The cheese layer on top was the best part of the dish. It came out golden brown, however, the dish didn’t hold together like a bake normally would because of the lack of shredded cheese. It came out almost like an egg scramble with no egg.
There are so many beautiful colors in this dish, each more delicious than the last. Anything featuring that much golden brown has to taste good. I really liked this dish. I ate this portion as a snack on the night I cooked it and I packed the rest for lunch that week. Each time I ate the dish, it did not disappoint. I would definitely cook something like this again.
GRADE: A-
